Pretension ..

Pretension is a survival strategy for the weak-minded and over-ambitious - George Easaw

Most of the people resort to pretension as a strategy in their lives. Why ? Basically we pretend lot of things when we have to achieve much but do not have the wherewithal or resources to achieve them. 

Here are some quotes from great thinkers in history who have enlightened us as to how dangerous pretension could be. It can kill a person by spreading incorrect facts of his abilities and strengths.

Elon Musk - the iron man ..

Elon Musk, single handedly fighting the world to disrupt it ..

Is he the messiah for a dying world, to save it from eternal destruction and to preserve it for the future generations of the world ! You should listen to this guy.

Listen to him in this Bloomberg youtube video .. 

Through Tesla Motors he is out to disrupt the internal combustion engine of a 125 years, giving sleepless nights and shivers to the likes of Toyota, GM, VW, Ford etc, to bring Sustainable Transport to this world. 

Listen to Elon at his Stanford University talk .. 

His other dream through Solar City is to make solar energy affordable and accessible across the world, besides making space travel, through SpaceX, within the reach of the common man, threatening NASA, ISRO and ESA ... Wow !!

Truly exceptional !! Great news for an energy hungry world looking for  sustainable means to take humanity forward.

Listen to his CNN talk here ..

Beautiful integrating Technology, Environment and Business (TEB), doing everything with a business mind to make it self-sustaining and viable in the long run of time ..

Another of his great ideas is the hyperloop. Listen to the concept here ..

South Africa's contribution to this world !! The TEB man !!

George..

TESLA MOTORS, leader in sustainable transport ..

Elon Musk with a model X

It all started with the TESLA Roadster, high costs..

Then came TESLA Model S, high costs still ..

Elon Musk 's TESLA is a great automobile company that is striving to provide leadership and change the automobile industry from the Internal combustion (IC) engine days to more modern, less polluting electric driven vehicles.

Click here for the biographical video of Elon Musk .. (45 min)

Click here for another great National Geographic video - Megafactories .... (45 min)

Click here for Elon's TED talk conversation with Chris Anderson  (20 mins)

Click here for the TESLA youtube video on release of Model 3 

Click on this link for a Sept '15 Forbes magazine write up on TESLA's innovative strategy and work standards ..

I am reminded of a project by Gururaj Deshpande, whose a123systems, (www.a123systems.com) is coming out with a AA battery powered car, which is a clear demo of how fuel cells can revolutionise the auto industry.

TESLA Model X with better battery battery capacity

The latest one, MODEL 3, taking the world by storm
costing about $35,000, it is high-tech and
moderately priced ...

Let us also not forget that to make batteries for 500,000 cars by 2020, TESLA also needs to have an equally large Lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility. A good example of backward integration, as presently TESLA is leading the innovation and does not expect any entrepreneur to come up with plans to manufacture such large numbers of batteries. It is a huge gamble TESLA is taking in the Nevada desert building such a huge factory with a capacity to produce 50 GWh by 2020, (click on the link) but given the need to preserve the environment, the world will back him for sure.

Elon Musk's radical innovation of bringing the world's first electric car with a range of almost 265 miles, (which motivated other auto majors to follow suit) and then building the world's largest Lithium-ion battery factory in the Nevada desert (powered on solar energy) to power it up speaks of his commitment to the cause of sustainable transport. and reducing carbon footprint. Now it makes sense for other electric car manufacturers to standardise on the battery design with Tesla's high capacity, efficient batteries than depend on third parties for their less than perfect and expensive batteries.

Second largest factory floor in the world in Nevada desert.

In a report that came in the MIT Technology Review in 2013, it was reported that even if we factor in the pollution to produce the electricity that drives TESLA's cars, the total carbon footprint would still be 40% less than conventional cars using conventional fuel.

How is it that despite many electric cars in the market by big names like Toyota, GM, Ford, Mitsubishi, Renault, Honda and the like, Tesla is able to carve a niche market for itself and dominate sales ? From the Roadster to the Model S, Tesla has been able to cut costs per KWh of storage by almost 50%. Partnering with Panasonic of Japan has helped it take the lead in the automobiles battery industry, improving the energy density of the batteries. But making them in sizes and shapes that makes them less susceptible to fire, leaks and physical damage, while ensuring ease in manufacturing are the long term challenges TESLA is facing these days.

Normal recharging overnight and recharging with superchargers in less than 1 hr for a 265 mile journey (just less than 20 supercharging stations across the US) has been a constraint on the public acceptability of the car. But given that TESLA is driving the innovation in this area and collaborating with research organisations that is helping improve energy density per kg of battery weight and is thus able to dictate standards and formats over time, may turn out better for the electrical automobile industry as a whole.

While studying TESLA, it is observed that

1. in the rush to be the first reliable and cost efficient electric car in the world, Tesla is forced to backward integrate, ie. control the number, quality, capacity and costs of the battery packs which are integral to manufacturing efficient, reliable, cost efficient electric car models in future

2. in the urge to be the market leader, Tesla is also increasing the number of simple charging and super-charging stations across the US and around the world in important countries in Europe and Asia.

3. it is a partner to companies that are trying to make the planet a more liveable place for future generations

4. it wants to be seen as impacting life not only on the planet but also outside it through the company SpaceX

Let us hope that Tesla is able to maintain its cutting edge research, applications and innovation to be a leader in whatever area it enters, under a dynamic, hard working leader Elon Musk..

Click for a college project study on TESLA here ..

george

The train that never stops, great idea from China ..

The train that never stops at a station! New concept. China is working on it.

How to get on and off the non-stop high speed train?

A new Chinese train innovation-

No time is wasted. The bullet train is moving all the time. If there are 30 stations between Beijing and Guangzhou, just stopping and accelerating again at each station will waste both energy and time.   A mere 5 min stop per station (elderly passengers cannot be hurried) will result in a total loss of 5 min x 30 stations or 2.5 hours of train journey time!

The Chinese innovation is as follows. When the train arrives at a station, it will not stop at all.

The passengers at a station embark onto a connector cabin way before the train even arrives at the station. When the train arrives, it just slows down to picks up the connector cabin which will move with the train on the roof  of the train.

While the train is still travelling away from the station, those passengers will board the train from the connector cabin mounted on the train's roof. After fully unloading all its passengers, the connector cabin will be moved to the back of the train so that the next batch of outgoing passengers who want to alight at the next station will board the connector cabin at the rear of the train roof.

When the train arrives at the next station, it will simply drop the whole connector cabin at the station itself and leave it behind at the station.

The outgoing passengers can take their own time to disembark at the station while the train had already left. At the same time, the train will pick up the incoming embarking passengers on another connector cabin in the front part of the train's roof. So the train will always drop one connector cabin at the rear of its roof and pick up a new connector cabin in the front part of the train's roof at each station.

Now watch the video..

GSLV Mk III and RLV-TD ..

ISRO's successful GSLV D6 cryogenic rocket  launch with a 2.2 T comm satellite last year made great news.

GSLV D6, with cryo engine

It is to be followed by GSLV Mk III using an advanced and more powerful cryogenic engine to carry satellites upto 5 T to orbit this year.

Besides these, our highly successful unmanned  lunar mission Chandrayaan and inter-planetary mission Mangalyaan, our own 'mini hubble' telescope in space Astrosat and our indigenous regional satellite navigational system NAVIC, to be joined by the Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV-TD) in June '16, will definitely make India, an efficient, reliable, low cost global space power to reckon with, with no one advanced enough to rub shoulders with !!

Go India Go !! With peace and patience, the world is at your feet !

http://forbesindia.com/blog/technology/why-gslv-d6s-success-is-significant-for-india-and-isro/

George (photo courtesy The Hindu)

Patience is the key to everything..

How to start writing a book ..

This is a good Forbes article on how to write a book ..

It talks of the most important five stages in writing a book.. Here is a good article on how to write good books..

Another one on 15 tips on  writing better ,..

The important points are as follows (the last one is very important): 

1. The first and most important stage is to understand your audience / reader

2. Practice writing - writing a book is like running a marathon, one oes not simply get to start, run and finish the marathon. It requires constant practice, testing one's endurance,

3. Find one's space - free time and place to write without getting disturbed

4. Plan the book before one starts writing, rough pages, number of chapters, content in each chapter and so on

5. The writing must make sense to another person who has not seen you or read about you.  Find an editor, who can correct one's own writing.

Good luck, hope you get  your first book ready soon !!

george..